Medicare Local peer group

What is a Medicare Local

Medicare Locals are new primary health care organisations established to improve responsiveness, coordinate primary health care delivery and tackle local health care needs and service gaps. They have been established by the Australian Government to drive improvements in primary health care and ensure that services are better tailored to meet the needs of local communities. For further information, see Glossary and Index.

What is a Medicare Local peer group

Australia is a diverse country settled by a diverse population. To enable the presentation and reporting of comparable information to stimulate and inform efforts to improve the health system, improve transparency, accountability and inform consumers, the Authority has grouped the 61 Medical Locals into seven clusters called peer groups. This enables a fairer comparison of individual Medicare Locals within peers, and also gives a summary of variation across Australias diverse metropolitan, regional and rural populations by presenting aggregate results for each peer group.

The grouping of Medicare Locals into seven peer groups was undertaken by the Authority using statistical cluster analysis of the 2006 Census, based on socioeconomic status for each Medicare Local (ABS, Information Paper: An Introduction to Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), 2006 (ABS cat. no. 2039.0)) and 2006 Census based Remoteness Area categories. The initial cluster analysis was conducted by the ABS at the request of the Authority, and further information was introduced, including discussions on early drafts with key stakeholders. The cluster analysis produced five groupings of Medicare Locals (see Figure 1). These initial groupings were considered a starting point. Using additional information on the average distance to the closest large capital city and major hospital (A1 public hospitals in the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Public Hospital Peer Group classification, 2010–11) and face validity testing using knowledge from stakeholders, the Authority further refined the five groups. In addition, some Medicare Locals within a group appeared as outliers in terms of socioeconomic status and remoteness. These were then reassigned to a more appropriate group. This resulted in an increase from five peer groupings (Figure 1) to a total of seven (Figure 2). Table 1 contains a list of the Medicare Locals and the group to which each was allocated in the initial cluster analysis alongside their final peer grouping.

ABS analysis of results of the 2011 Census to produce updated Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas and Remoteness Area Categories was released in March 2013. The results will be examined by the Authority, along with other information and methods to review the current peer group design, categories, and future options for fair comparison and reporting of health and other information for Medicare Locals.